Bulldogs hang tough but fall after giving up 30 fourth-quarter points

Published 6:57 pm, Friday, November 11, 2011

Midland quarterback Tanner Culp (12) looks to handoff the football during the game between Arlington Martin and Midland High School. Martin beat Midland 37-7. Matt Pearce special to the MRT

Midland quarterback Tanner Culp (12) looks to handoff the football during the game between Arlington Martin and Midland High School. Martin beat Midland 37-7. Matt Pearce special to the MRT

Photo: Matt Pearce

Bulldogs hang tough but fall after giving up 30 fourth-quarter points

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ARLINGTON — For nearly 37 minutes, Midland High was feeling comfortable as it hung with District 4-5A champion Arlington Martin in a Class 5A Division I bi-district playoff game Friday night.

But that comfortable feeling left the Bulldogs in a hurry as the fourth quarter snowballed out of control in Martin’s favor. The Warriors ended Midland High’s season with a 37-7 victory, during which they scored 37 unanswered points, including an incredible 30 in the fourth quarter alone.

“We started out pretty well,” Midland High coach Craig Yenzer said. “It was 10-7 early in the fourth quarter. That’s all I asked of the team to keep it close and give us a chance to win it. Then the turnovers started and it just snowballed.”

After a Brent Stewart interception at the MHS 14 ended a promising opening drive for Arlington Martin (10-1), junior quarterback Connor Beck, playing for the injured Tanner Culp, hooked up with senior receiver Donavon Lee on a 70-yard pass play that took the Bulldogs down to the Martin 16. Five plays later, Beck scored on a 2-yard run, giving the Bulldogs (6-5) a 7-0 lead with 5:22 left in the opening quarter.

That lead held up through halftime and up until there was less than 7 minutes to play in the third quarter. That’s when Martin junior running back Kyle Hicks scored on a 17-yard run to pull the Warriors even with the Bulldogs. That score was just the beginning of the end for the Bulldogs.

“I really don’t know what happened,” Beck said. “The offense kind of broke down. Tanner went down. It just went south in a hurry for us.”

A 42-yard field goal by Martin kicker Ben Grogan gave Martin a 10-7 lead less than a minute into the fourth quarter. And while that 10-7 margin might have held up for the Warriors, they were far from being down in the game’s final 12 minutes.

After Midland High failed to convert a fake punt into a new set of downs on fourth down, Hicks, who finished with 207 yards on 21 carries, had his longest run of the night, breaking off a 62-yard scoring jaunt with 8:14 to play.

Beck was intercepted on Midland High’s first paly of its ensuing drive with senior cornerback Eric Amoako — a University of Oregon commit — returning the pick to the Midland High 36. The Warriors then used a double reverse pass to get Eric Hughes behind the Bulldogs secondary and quarterback Brodie Lambert laid a pass just out of the reach of the outstretched arm of MHS cornerback Brandon Williams for a 23-7 lead.

Culp, who had been in and out of the game for Midland High as he dealt with a bum ankle, was sacked on third down of Midland High’s next drive with Martin senior defensive tackle Mustafa Haboul stripping Midland High’s senior quarterback of the ball in the process. Preston Holman recovered it for the Warriors, and three plays later, Haboul capped the possession he started with a 3-yard TD plunge.

The Warriors turned another Midland High fumble into a 7-yard TD run by Lambert with 1:34 to play to cap the game’s scoring.

“I thought our defense played pretty well for most of the game,” Yenzer said. “They came up with big plays when we needed them. Give (Arlington Martin) a lot of credit. They’ve got a lot of good players, but we really helped them a lot with all the turnovers.”

The Midland High offense struggled to consistently move the football against a stout Martin defense throughout the night. The Bulldogs finished with 309 total yards, but Martin was able to particularly frustrate Midland High’s running game, holding senior tailback Jacoby Webster to just 109 yards on 28 carries.

“We never really got going offensively,” Yenzer said. “That was disappointing. That had a lot to do with (Arlington Martin). They really got off blocks, we just couldn’t seem to hold on to them. There were a couple times we thought we were about to hit them big, but couldn’t make the play we needed to make.”